Sunday, August 19, 2012

I'm just back from a short vacation where I had the most limited internet access I've experienced in about ten years. I'm ashamed of how out-of-sorts it made me. When I managed to get a half-hour of wifi access this morning, it was as close to the feeling a drug addict has after a fix as I'm likely to ever get.

So just a few catch-up items.

I apologize for the ad that runs before this Daily Show segment, and also for the tasteless title they put on it, but other than that, their analysis of the voter ID situation is right on. It's about 5 minutes long.

Let's see... Pennsylvania's Republicans can't show any cases where someone impersonated a voter, as would be prevented by an ID law. And they're on record as saying they're motivated by partisan political advantage. Sounds like a necessary and fair law to me.

I can't help but wonder if the Pennsylvania judge who upheld this awful ID law is being paid off, as in the case of the judge in that state who was taking bribes from a private prison company to put teenagers in jail.

Meanwhile, states like Mississippi, Florida, and Texas have set the income ceiling for Medicaid recipients at absurdly low levels for a family of three ($8,200, $11,000, and just $5,000, respectively) -- basically getting rid of Medicaid in their states. Who is it that wants to turn over even more control of safety net spending to the states? Who elects the people who makes these laws?

Yet unlikely and unregistered voters favor Obama over Romney about 2.5 to 1. They say they don't plan to vote because "nothing ever gets done in Washington" and that their vote doesn't matter. But if they all voted, Obama would win, and possibly they would vote out a few of the jerks trying to take away their right to vote and destroy the safety net at the same time.

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Third of four daughters, raised in a rural area outside of a small town. Now living in a moderately large city, making media and immersed in other people's media. Finally cleaning out the filing cabinet and loading its contents to the cloud.